SINAI Urban Health Institute

Inspired by the Sinai Improving Community Health Survey, community based organizations and health care providers from Chicago's Asian American community saw the value of local level health information. With support from the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Asian Health Coalition of Illinois, the Chinese American Service League and the Sinai Urban Health Institute partnered to develop a similar survey to be conducted in one of Chicago's most concentrated Asian American populations. In the summer of 2006, led by a summer intern, they developed Chicago's Chinatown Community Health Survey. From October to December 2006, 7 trained interviewers completed nearly 130 surveys face-to-face in Mandarin, Cantonese and English with Asian adults living in Chinatown. For the first time ever in Chicago, this survey offers disaggregated Asian data and provides comprehensive examination of health related outcomes and risk factors, along with health care utilization, access to culturally appropriate services and health literacy among Asian adults living in Chinatown.

• With renewed funding from the Retirement Foundation, data collection will resume at the end of April 2007 with the goal of completing another 200 surveys. 
• Three abstracts describing preliminary findings and the importance of this survey have been submitted to the American Public Health Association.

Illinois Department of Public Health: http://www.idph.state.il.us/
Asian Health Coalition of Illinois: http://www.asianhealth.org/
Chinese American Service League: http://www.caslservice.org/

For more information regarding this project, please send an e-mail to Ami Shah at suhi@sinai.org